Week 3 Electronic articles and photos

"Work with schools, Webster Branch: story hour, about 1910,
Miss Cheznay (?)."

Courtesy New York Public Library, New York Public Library Visual Materials (more info). Sourced from Flickr Commons Collection.

This week I looked for online articles and items in other formats using search engines. Finding only the odd photo within an article, I also researched Flickr for photos and enjoyed the results. The above photo is part of New York Public Library's Working with Schools Collection - it was nice to see generous amounts of photos that illustrate what I've been reading about. This collection has over 60 images; it helped me to gain interest in the topic and appreciate what children's libraries were actually like in the early C20th.

Browsing article abstracts I noticed the contrast to books in their really specific subject coverage, such as the purpose of refuge children's public libraries served during WW1. Searching using EBSCOHost was time consuming until finding the subject term "Libraries & children" - search engines seem to have their own quirks. I really liked Gale search engine's search tools; narrowing a search by journal title was really quick, and Gale's Subject Guide Search is the quickest method I have come across to identify relevant subject terms. You just identify a Subject then link to Subject Subdivisions or Related Terms, e.g. Children's libraries>History= 9 items.

After much searching I found 2-4 highly relevant articles - there are not that many, a point made in a research website I found last week. Material I have found so far predominantly covers the US, with very little coverage of GB and Australia. Interesting, as I had planned to focus on Australian children's public libraries. So, next I'll be looking for some Australian content.